


She Bleeds From Under the Band

by orphan_account



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: Angst, Gen, some FemSlash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 18:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7185239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She bleeds from under the band. 0001 bleeds red, which I already knew."<br/>— The Ask and the Answer</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Bleeds From Under the Band

**Author's Note:**

> Credits to Nabat Fayaq Rahman's poetry for the refrain.

You do not die. 

.

It is Spring, and would-be 0519 thinks would-be 0520 is the most beautiful person in the world. She lives in the farm next to your master's orchard. Sometimes when you are working, you can hear her voice from across the narrow street, filled with visions of graceful shoulders that hide a silent strength, not quite defiant, yet, and beautifully calloused fingers and a lilac voice full of care and love. 

A voice that would-be 0519 so badly wishes can ―

You like to catch her eye at that, bent over freshly planted tomato seeds, or from behind strawberry bushes, watch her voice turn pink with exasperated embarrassment. 

You meet would-be 0520 at the market sometimes. She helps you with your burdens when she can and there is a kindness in her that you think is more beautiful that mere friendliness. You can see would-be 0519 in her voice, too, in pleasant ways that would-be-0519 doesn't know about, yet. Up close, she isn't as strong as she looks from afar. Tremors shiver through her hands as her Master's knuckles whiten on her shoulders, and there are wavering undertones hidden beneath the surface of her voice.

0519 and 0520 injure their backs, crushed under wooden planks, the day after their number bands are cut into their arms and they truly become 0519 and 0520. 

Soldiers in blue uniforms come and take them away, promising them healers and doctors, and 0520 just stares at 0519, because she has no more voice to speak anymore, because you all know what happens to those who cannot work anymore. 

.

1121 is but a child, a child in 0823's arms — 0823 and 0228 who pleaded and cried out in silence, faces twisted in silent screams, 0823 and 0228 who were pushed back with rifles to their heads and jeers in their faces.

You do not die when the band snaps into the child's flesh, slicing impossibly tender skin and squirming flesh. It is too large, too disproportional, insentient jaws swallowing everything into its void.

They stay in the same field as you, and the silent screaming continues throughout the night as the child cries and cries and cries. Each sound is a terrible tear through the stifling night air. It is all there is, this silenced screaming, magnified a hundredfold through the thick air across the wreaths of desperate clicking that says nothing about the pain. You do not die. 

.

You've never met 0626 before. You think she may have been part of the group that worked in the small textile factory at the southern edge of town, but you can't be sure.

The night after you are banded she comes over to your field and hands out ragged strips of cloth, salvaged no doubt from her previous job, and helps to bind some of the worst wounds to offer some sort of protection from the rough gravel you dig through each day and the sting of infection. She is all hands and action as she works, doesn't look up.

You don't see her again.

Not until the afternoon when soldiers return with guns and blades, and line all of you up against the wall and cock their rifles, and laugh. You do not die. 

.

"We've got to keep track of the animals somehow," his friend says, clicking his words through his mouth. There is cruelty in his voice, cruelty that will lead him to do what he is doing without letting him realise the presence of a choice. Uninformed cruelty, though. He doesn't understand. He is nothing more than his pack animal. The Knife, however —

"They ain't animals, Davy." They have had this argument before, so many times and leading to so many fights, but now he just sounds half-hearted, as though saying it simply out of reflex. They have had this argument before, and now he isn't even trying.

"Whatever, Pigpiss. Take these." He holds out a bolt cutting tool and a handful of metal bands, strapped together with a longer one. The Knife takes them from him, before realising what he is holding.

Shock swells right out of him, colouring the air around him in thick, palpable waves. Even the face of that girl, the one that occupies his voice so often and for so long that even you've come to know her. In his voice, you see the way they mark the pack animals in their farm with these same bands. You see the way they wound, the way they infect and agonise and the way it stays, permanently marking the animal banded with who it is, nothing more.

"We ain't."

"Get a move on, Pigpiss. We're meant to get through two hundred today."

You watch would-be 0001 staring at the chain of bands. She is smaller than the most of you are, all translucent fingertips and a wavering lilac voice (gone, gone) and shy kindness. Right before her the Knife is thinking about how if he doesn't do it someone else would and better he does it than just his friend, better he be the one who hurts her, hurts all of you.

He takes would-be 0001's hand and she's still staring at him, unblinking. His voice registers shock at the warmth of her skin, the pulse beating underneath, and the horror that accompanies what he is doing. It sways his voice, filling it and pulsating beneath, almost tipping him over, but never does, because better he be the one to hurt her, hurt all of you. His friend reaches out and twists the bolting tool together, locking the metal strip into her wrist.

She hisses at the pain of it. You all do. Would-be 1016 — still so young, so much younger than even you — who is standing beside you squeezes your hand with his shaking fingers. You look up at the Knife who is still staring into 0001 eyes, looking at her thinking he's saved her, and it is all you can do not to charge forward and grab the rifle from his useless fingers and beat him until he finally topples under the weight of you, the weight of his horror, until he finally —

And he is thinking about the colour of her blood that flows from the wound that he has just created. The blood which, of course, is as crimson as that within his own veins. She bleeds red, he is thinking, and his voice seems to roil over with something hidden just beneath, because she bleeds red, she bleeds red. You do not die when 0001 bleeds red and red and would-be 1016 pushes his head into your shoulder, mouth open in a silent, terrified scream. You do not die.


End file.
